One day was for the annual atonement for my sins. And the fast was broken, in a very non-traditional way - boiled lobsters - at Bennett and Harriet's house. They live near where I pray. Another couple of days were devoted to the care of my mate who had surgery; Lene's mostly OK now.
Two sails. The first with Bill, the author of a book about his multi-day sail, aboard his catboat, in New York City waters. He left from Jamaica Bay on the south shore of Long Island, up the East River and into Long Island Sound, with many memories of past experiences that occurred to him during this multiday voyage. I had borrowed the book from Bennett and wrote to Bill and offered him a ride on ILENE, which is as sleek and modern as his catboat's look is classic. He teaches Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center; a new friend.
The other sail was with Morty and Clara on ILENE. They are "Old Salts" and I was not sure who I would be sailing with that day, the primary mission of which was to put away the dink. But I only worked an hour on it, pulling it up onto the dock, inverting it and using a brush and lots of fresh water to scrape off the marine growths that covered its bottom and lower transom, before stowing it again on the dock. I had planned to pull it up to the top of the seawall but the tide had gone too far down for that. So I sailed, a nice couple of hours, going very deeply into Manhasset Bay, to the ten foot water line, before heading out. While there we passed "Thai Hot" while Bob was setting her anchor for the raft-up for those staying late for the Harlem's "Full Moon Rendezvous". These autumn sails are wonderful.
Next day was not a sail but a work day, though it took only an hour, near high tide, to float the dink, tow it to the seawall, get it up and fully deflate it before inverting it and using a yard cart to get it over to the "farm", the storage area across the street from the Club's driveway entrance. Then to place it atop another hard dink on the top level of a three shelf dinghy storage rack. There is a crew of men who are always working for the benefit of our Club. We could not exist without their near constant volunteer help. They had the Club's forklift running, which made the lift easy. It will be hard to steal the dink from its perch, without a forklift, and the lock on the chain will make that much more difficult.
With a little luck we have another two or three weeks before it is time to haul for the season.
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